That is one big pizza

Mouth full of sand

Imported Japanese Shrimp Twists

A just returned from a trip to Japan. She was generous enough to bring one of my favorite Japanese snack foods back with her.

X-Men: First Class receives passing grade

I'm done with superhero origin stories. This wasn't a particularly bad one, but I think Hollywood can do better than recycling the early issues of yet another comic book.

The movie dusts off several characters from the X-Men archive I've never seen or heard of, like Azazel. He walks around looking like Satan, complete with forked tail and teleporting in a burst of flames. Want to confuse yourself if you haven't seen the movie yet? Later in the X-Men mythology Mystique (the blue skinned shape shifting one) hooks up with this minor character, and the resulting child is the blue skinned devil-like teleporting character Nightcrawler. Don't bother looking for hints of romance between them, in this movie she only has eyes for Magneto.

Want to spot a little discontinuity? Xavier and Erik are outside training, doing the whole rotate the radio telescope dish thing. They get called inside to see an announcement on the television, and Erik walks into the living room... carrying a pistol? Just minutes earlier his hands were empty when he was using his powers. Manifesting pistols seems like it could be a pretty useful mutant power, although it's not strictly within the comic canon.

I've seen worse superhero movies, like the more recent Spidermans. (The Spiderman movies, not Spidermen) The historical fiction is pretty entertaining with all the period vehicles and costumes. The worst part is that if recent study results of Americans being terrible at history are true, there's a large portion of this movie's prospective audience that won't know the Cuban missile crisis was real and not just an invented movie plot element.

Fun to see in the theater, but if you're not enthusiastic about it you'll lose nothing by waiting for the video.

Michigan film tax credit woes

Advocates of the Michigan film tax credit probably haven't encountered establishments they'd like to patronize closed for filming yet. My lunch was completely ruined when my local Thai restaurant was closed today for filming. As a tax payer, I'm paying to ruin my own lunch! I had to eat Chinese instead of Thai. This has been the worst day so far this week.